Hyouri Ittai
by kasutan
Summary: "Two views of the same thing; being inseparable like the two sides of an object; two sides of the same coin." Fall approaches after Jinchuu and when unexpected houseguests arrive at the gates, Kaoru must learn to accept the face under Kenshin's façade just as he must come to understand the true power hidden in the history of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu and its adjutant master.
1. Part I

_Author's Note: It's been a while since I wrote fanfiction or, to be honest, anything that wasn't academic. I used to be active here but drifted away from and fandom in general, until recently, when I discovered the RK live action film. That led me back here, to the wonderful likes of Ayezur's Vaster Than Empires and Rainfelt's Sortiarius, which inspired me to try my hand at writing again._

_This particular story was actually brought on by my grumpy dissatisfaction with the treatment of Kaoru towards the end of the manga (though it is wonderful!) and an early comment by Watsuki that Kaoru's skills, though dwarfed by Kenshin's and Sanosuke's, were at least that of a "national-level champion," if not superior, along with a very particular line in the first volume. As such, it's probably worth mentioning that this is based on the manga canon and not the anime, the reason for which will hopefully be apparent in a few chapters._

_I would sincerely appreciate feedback of any kind, especially concrete crit about my writing style—I am working on cutting back on my purple prose and my overwriting tendencies (if you'll believe it, this is the heavily edited version of the first chapter), but if anyone has any suggestions on how to tighten things up further I would sincerely love to hear them. I also don't have a beta or anything like that, so I apologize for any glaring and obvious typos or grammatical errors._

_One last note; I know it's probably still a bit pretentious to use Japanese in a fic, but I come from that golden age of where everybody inserted random Japanese into their fics for no damn reason (myself included… embarrassing confession time!). The title works better than "Sides of a Sword" or whatever the hell else I was going to go with, though, so I've kept it. Hopefully I've managed to walk the fine line here of keeping the story in character and culture without peppering it with random _sesshas_ and _de gozarus_._

* * *

**表裏一体  
**_**Hyouri Ittai**_

_****_"Two views of the same thing; being inseparable like the two sides of an object; two sides of the same coin." Fall approaches after _Jinchuu _andwhen unexpected houseguests arrive at the gates, Kaoru must learn to accept the face under Kenshin's façade just as he must come to understand the true power hidden in the history of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu and its adjutant master. 

* * *

_September 27__th__, 1878 (Meiji 11)_

**I**

Summer had ended sometime after they had returned home to Toyko, passing them all by so quickly that it was lost in the chaos and commotion of homecoming celebrations, late-night drinking parties, and the even later sleepless nights. The hot and humid heat that rippled over the city had parted to reveal clear blue skies, and only two typhoons, small and nothing quite like the ones she remembered from her childhood, had swept up from the coast. The rains had been pleasant and gentle, not terrifying gales, and had taken the muggy stickiness out of the air, for a time. Even though the heat had inevitably returned, now there was a gentle, cool breeze that blew in from the south, rustling the leaves that would change colour at any moment.

Which was most likely why she kept finding the carcasses of the summer cicadas all over the grounds. The weak typhoons and the autumn wind were only drafty enough to blow them out of the branches where they clung, even in death, and from the dark, secret corners under the porch. She heaved a small sigh and then looked around furtively before sweeping a few more of the hollow, cracked shells under the black pines that lined the fence. She'd left the dust pan inside the house and was tired of sweeping up the little beasts, anyway, and after all the trees would turn soon; they could just rake up the bugs along with the leaves and burn them all in the yard—

"_What the hell do you think you're doing!?_"

She jumped a good _shaku_ into the air and shot a startled look over her shoulder, to the dojo, where Yahiko's voice had hurtled from.

"You big oaf, you gotta be _gentle _with _washi _paper!"

"I'm tryin', damn it, ya little punk! Why the fuck am I doing the doors, anyway?!"

"Because when we gave you a hammer, you put a hole in the wall instead?!"

"Now, now, you two… There is no need to shout, that there is not…"

A breath of relief pushed its way out of her chest, and she found her lips curling into a small smile despite herself. Once the last of the cicadas were out of sight again, she brushed a bead of sweat from her temple and pulled on the tie at her shoulder, letting her sleeves unfurl from her back. She propped the broom up against the small, gnarled trunk of one of the Chinese oaks and stretched her arms in the shade as Sanosuke stormed out the dojo doorway.

"Enough, enough—it's too fuckin' hot to listen to your bitchin'! We've been workin' on this bullshit all day, already."

She leaned back against the trunk, hiding deeper into the shadows, and let her hands fall to her side. He had taken his shirt off, and she could see even at this distance the sweat pouring down from his hairline. The dojo was always hot at this time of year, a dim, dark heat that would persist in the grain of the wood until late autumn. She loved it—the hard sweat of a good summer workout, the revitalizing feeling of walking out afterwards into the cool autumn breeze—but Sano obviously didn't feel the same way. She smile faded as she pursed her lips and sucked at her teeth. There was a sort of indignant satisfaction in seeing Sano slaving away in her dojo so miserably. But it tasted bitter in her mouth.

"So what, you're just gonna give up?! _Sano_!"

Yahiko chased out after him, an oversized mallet slung across his one bare shoulder in the same way he normally carried his practice sword, and she noticed with a warm, unexpected surge of pride—_you're supposed to be angry at them_, she reminded herself, but couldn't help it—that he wasn't nearly as sweaty as Sano was. He still had one arm in his _uwagi_ and looked at most like he had finished a quick spar; he'd probably even grown a bit, considering where his head hit at the doorway. Maybe that was the sudden reason why he now felt fearless enough to order her out of her own dojo.

The bark of the tree was rough and course where she pressed her hands back against it, nothing like the polished hilt of her bokken.

"We told her we'd finish it this month—!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know! But what the hell are we suppose ta do about it, brat? If we don't got the wood—"

"But she's not gonna wait much longer if we don't finish soon!"

Sano screwed his face up and stomped off the porch. He grabbed his jacket from where it hung on one of the practice sword racks that they'd been forced to store outside during their work. "Oi, Kenshin!"

He stepped outside, materializing from the obscurity of the dark hall beyond, and Kaoru froze, clutching onto the tree behind her like one of the cicada shells.

The sun was bright and high in the sky, and Kenshin squinted and then shielded his eyes with the back of his hand, his other braced over the loose folds of his _uwagi_ at his hip. "Yes, Sano?" He sighed, but was genuinely happy to be outside; they had shut the dojo up tight, and their weeks of labour had made the air inside stagnant and stale. The southern breeze that skimmed along the porch carried a coolness in it that was refreshing, and the earthy scent of the neighbour's blooming chrysanthemum garden was a welcome change to, well. He resisted the urge to smell at himself like Sano was doing and instead took in the shade of the porch in silent appreciation, massaging the kink out of his right shoulder, which hadn't completely healed yet. "What would it be this time?"

"I'm goin' ta check the market. See if the wood is in." Sano's voice was gruff as he reeled back from his own armpit and then shoved his arms into his jacket, realizing only belatedly and with a brash curse that it was inside out.

"But he said it wouldn't be in for another two days! You're just wasting time—" Kenshin placed his hand on Yahiko's shoulder, and the boy jerked his head up and caught his tongue. There was a towel folded on the deck next to Yahiko's feet, and he grumbled something—probably aimed at Sanosuke, who was still in a violent struggle with his jacket—but grudgingly obliged when Kenshin nodded his chin towards it.

"My thanks—and Yahiko is indeed correct, that he is," he continued on the boy's behalf at the same time as he dabbed the sheen of sweat off of his shoulders and neck. "Moreover, one is sure that Lord Kinoshita would have sent word had the shipment arrived."

Sano scoffed after finally getting the jacket on. "The guy's no _lord_," he groused, over-enunciating Kenshin's characteristic honourific. "He's chargin' us an arm and a leg for some shit that he can't even get in when he says he will, for fuck's sake."

"It has only been a few days—"

"Two weeks," Yahiko butt in, petulantly bouncing the mallet against his shoulder.

"—ah, indeed, only two weeks, and he did indicate that it should without fault arrive from the port either today or tomorrow, that he did—"

"If there were no unavoidable 'acts of god,'" Sano added, then spat on the ground.

"Like, you know, a _typhoon_?" Alongside Yahiko, they looked up past the eaves to the clear sky and remembered the foreboding warning from old man Oibore.

"Well…" Kenshin chewed carefully on his words, holding the towel against the damp hairs at his nape. "That is to say…"

"We're fucked," Sanosuke drawled, and Kenshin found that he couldn't disagree with his friend's succinct assessment. So, instead, he gave a begrudging bob of his head and dropped his hand from the back of his neck while, at his side, Yahiko began to do basic forms with the mallet.

"Kaoru… isn't gonna… like this," he expelled with each swing. "She's getting… pretty pissed that we're… not letting her practice. She's gonna start… asking why…"

From the corners of his eyes Kenshin watched the small, distinct muscles on Yahiko's forearms work to keep the off-balanced weapon level, and a small, strained smile pulled at his lips; of course Yahiko would worry, would be concerned. It had taken them much longer than both he and Sano had thought to repair the damage, and their kind assertions that they wanted to fix it up as it truly deserved, better than it had been in years, had begun to wear thin on the adjutant master of the Kamiya Kasshin style weeks earlier, when the summer had outpaced them and their efforts.

Feeling the tension that he had been trying so desperately to work off tug at his shoulders again, Kenshin turned slightly to stare through the open _shoji _into the dark calm of the dojo. He had been heading to the bath at the end of the other day when she had come around the corner, and like each time that he saw her acting just like she had before—he pursed his lips, cracked the knuckles of his right hand around the towel—before _the incident_, his heart had clenched; but time time, the usual relief and reassurance had been cut with something else. He'd recognized immediately the folded fabrics in her arms, the greyed blue broadcloth of her pleated pants,the cream of her jacket, and stacked on top the faded white wrappings that she would used to bind her… At any rate, he had briefly, in the moments before they crossed paths on the porch, panicked; that they hadn't finished their work in the dojo, that she would _when_, or worse, _why—_and inexplicably rattled to his core, he had done the only thing he could think of; he had stepped in her way and thanked her for bringing him the laundry, even though he knew as well as she did that he had finished the wash hours earlier. He stayed up that evening, even after the belly of the sun had dipped low under the horizon, scrubbing until his knuckles were raw and staring across his drawn brow at the dojo in the distance.

"—we just… tell her?"

"Oro?" He blinked the memory out of his eyes and then turned back around. Sano was staring at him, his forehead lined with annoyance but also worry, as Yahiko gave a particularly strong swing of the mallet.

"I said, we should just… tell her why. She already knows… most of what happened… when Eni—ah!" Yahiko stumbled forward when Kenshin smoothly removed the mallet from his grip. He smiled kindly, but his eyes were fixed, firm.

"Your practice sword would serve you better, that it would." He walked to the edge of the porch, laying the mallet down, and after hanging the towel on the practice sword rack he began to shrug his arms back into his sleeves. "And Miss Kaoru can wait a bit longer—one will speak to her if one must."

Sano clucked his tongue in irritation, rolling a shoulder under one hand. "Yeah… Kinoshita'll be bringin' us the damn cypress from Ise before that happens."

"Oro?" Yahiko sniggered and Kenshin chuckled once through his nose, part exasperation and part begrudging admission that Sanosuke was probably correct—on both counts, he had to admit, a touch humiliated.

"At this rate, it'd be faster for us to cut the damn trees down our damn selves. Just use the shit here. I mean, it don't _gotta _be cypress, does it? Just use what's already here. What the hell does missy need all these fancy trees here for anyw—aw, _shit._"

Kenshin looked up from rearranging his clothes and followed Sanosuke's line of sight, and at first thought the oath was because Megumi was coming unannounced up the path; Sano had told him that they had exchanged some choice words regarding his hand earlier that week. But then Sano was on his feet, hurrying past him to slide the dojo doors shut, and Megumi was squinting with her hand shielding her eyes into the shadows of one of the stunted oaks—

"Kaoru? What could you _possibly _be doing in there?" The doctor's shrill voice rang through the grounds, and Kenshin stiffened, his hands freezing on his collar, when he saw the dark green hem of a kimono quiver in trees' shade.

"How much does she know!? How much did she hear!?" Sano was hissing at Yahiko, while Kenshin felt the dawning dismay of a hot blush rushing up his neck from his chest and wondered, privately and uneasily, _how much did she see?_ Turning abruptly from the vision of her dark hair, her white neck and blue eyes emerging from the shadows, he busied himself and his errant mind with helping Sano and Yahiko to pick up their work and obscure their purpose.

"Kaoru! You'll ruin that beautiful new kimono, standing in the dirt like that. What _are_ you doing in there?"

"T-_thank you, _Megumi, _for your concern_," Kaoru bit out after grabbing the broom from the tree and making to furiously sweep the underbrush away. She realized only after a second of frantic, vicious sweeping that her head was faint, from the heat or from listening to them or from the hot pump of blood in her chest and temples, and Megumi must have noticed, because she had already extended a delicate hand for Kaoru to rest her weight on.

—or maybe not, because the foxish woman immediately drew her close. Kaoru tripped over her own feet and their heads bumped together, but while Kaoru grimaced Megumi seemed not to mind, mostly because her other hand had trapped Kaoru's chin in the vice-like grip of dainty fingers. She pointed Kaoru in the direction of the dojo, where the men's backs were turned to them. Kaoru tried to escape, but it was futile, and Megumi turned her head and whispered shrewdly—much too shrewdly—in her ear, "were you… _spying _on our dear Ken, Kaoru?"

"Me-_Megumi_!" If she had been flushed earlier, she was practically glowing by the time she freed herself from the doctor's grip.

"Ohohoho! Just as I thought. I have very keen eyes, you know. As a doctor, it is only necessary." The back of her hand served to decorously muffle her laughter at the same time as it kept her voice low and enigmatic. "For instance, in the short time that I—I'm sorry, _we_—have been watching dear Ken, I've discerned that the wound on his shoulder is still causing him discomfort—you _did _see the way he was caressing his shoulder, did you not, Kaoru? When his shirt was off?"

Megumi looked over her shoulder, dark eyes glinting dangerously, to see that Kaoru had pulled her crimson head into her shoulders and was once again sweeping furiously, kicking up a small storm of dust. "Though it _is_ healing as nicely as the one across his abdomina—ah, goodness, I'm sure you're not familiar with medical terminology—those muscles on his stomach." If anyone had been looking, they would have seen the long shadows of vixen ears twitching atop of her head as she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and mumbled in a concerned tone, "though dear Ken may not be eating enough…"

Kaoru's sweeping stopped again, and Megumi waited patiently. "… why… would you say that?"

"Ara! You didn't see the prominence of his iliac furrow?"

She must have sensed a trap, because she twisted her mouth up for a moment and stared with wary eyes… but the worry won out. "His… what?"

And Megumi, a carnivorous gleam in her eye, pounced. "You _know_," she purred and watched Kaoru self-destruct when she drew a demonstrative fingertip along her own hip bones, "those delightful lines just here—"

"_M-MEGUMI_!"

"I ain't got a clue what foxy's doing to missy over there," Sano said as they finished shutting up the dojo, "but let's hope it keeps her sidetracked from over _here_."

"Indeed." There was a _click _as the _shoji _slid shut, and though it gave him some form of satisfaction, Kenshin had the sinking feeling that the _washi _paper and thin cedar lattice wouldn't keep her out much longer. The weight of his _sakabatou _was less reassuring than usual as he picked it up from the porch and slid it through his waistband. "Let us go see and what the commotion is all about, shall we?"

"I dunno," Yahiko said grimly, hopping off the porch and then waiting for Kenshin and Sano to join him, "ugly over there might kill us with a dust storm before the typhoon can get here."

That was definitely a possibility, Kenshin had to admit, considering her exaggerated sweeping with the straw broom. She had surrounded herself with a thick haze of dust and dirt by the time Megumi noticed their approach and gave him a cordial greeting.

"Dearest Ken! How are you? I was just passing by and thought, my, I should check up on my best patient—"

"I thought I was your best patient, foxy."

"You would be, if you ever paid me," Megumi snapped at Sanosuke, and the way her demeanor changed was like the light shifting suddenly and terribly over a Noh mask. Kenshin gave an uneasy laugh, glancing quickly between the scornful woman in front of him and his scorned friend behind him, and then inclined his head in thanks.

"This one is doing well, that I am. My thanks for your concern, Miss Megumi." She gave him that thin, sensible smile of hers, and he continued. "But, if this lowly one remembers correctly, you were here just yesterday to do the same, were you not?" When her eyes flashed he knew he had cornered her. "So to what pleasure do we owe this visit, then?"

"Oh Ken, you do know me so well." She brushed her hair back over her shoulder in a subtle gesture that directed his eyes behind her, to Kaoru in her cloud. "I was actually on the way back to Dr. Oguni's when I realized that Kaoru and I hadn't spent some time alone since… well, since Kyoto! And earlier today when I was in the market, Tae invited me to bring her in for some special service." She said it over her shoulder and they all saw how Kaoru's shoulders flinched as she swept. "With you boys working so hard on the dojo, I thought it would be nice to have some female company."

"Ah… that sounds wonderful, indeed. What do you think, Miss Kaoru?"

She jumped and spun around quickly, and he assumed (or maybe hoped) it was the hard work of tidying the dojo grounds that had her face so flushed. "Uh—ah—I actually, uh, though I would stay here. Clean up some more. While you, uh, all go to the market?"

He blinked once, plastering a smile on even as the colour drained from his face; Sano spat on the ground and cursed low under his breath; and Yahiko was only slightly less obvious, slapping a hand on his forehead. Kenshin ignored them in favour of focusing in on the suppressed excitement shifting behind her blue eyes like shadows in deep water.

"I… heard you say you were going to go to get the wood?" Kaoru added, her tone as hopeful as it was hesitant. "For the dojo?"

But, no matter how he tried, he couldn't read her. She could have as easily been anxious over the fact that, with the wood, the repairs would soon be complete, as she could have been to steal away into the dojo as soon as he was safely out of sight.

He swallowed quietly and fumbled over his tongue when he opened his mouth again, and only belatedly saw Megumi's cheek twitch as she tried to conceal a smile. Ah. Well, Kenshin thought dryly, at least he still had _her_ number, and then smiled harder than ever. "One is sure Sano and Yahiko can manage the wood on their own. If you would like, this lowly one would be happy to prepare for you and Miss Megumi some tea and—"

"Are you sure, my dear Ken?" Megumi interrupted, just as he expected. "There was quite a bit of it coming into market today."

"Oro?" Well. _That, _he had not been expecting.

"Y… you mean the wood's finally in, Megumi!?"

"You sure, foxy? You saw it?! If you're screwin' with us—"

"I would never deign to screw with the likes of _you_," she snapped pointedly, "but yes, I saw it. The workhorses were bringing it in from port earlier, when I was on my rounds." Kenshin steeled himself just a moment before Sano's palm smacked him on his right shoulder and Yahiko's elbow knocked his left knee out. "If you're planning on carrying it yourselves—as I would imagine _you_ are," she added peevishly in Sanosuke's direction, "I would think it would be best if all three of you went."

"Ah—yes… so it… would probably be," he said weakly as the other two ran to the gate, and when his eyes flicked to Kaoru's, they were still unreadable.

"C'mon, _c'mon, _Kenshin!"

"The bastard'll probably sell it to somebody else if we don't get to it first—!"

Megumi put a hand on Kaoru's shoulder and pushed her towards the house. "Put that broom away now and freshen up! Tae is waiting for us," she called over her shoulder, and Kenshin bent his neck following the bounce in her obi—the striped one, he noted somewhere. One of his favourites.

"Relax," the doctor ordered when Kaoru was out of ear shot, and he uttered an _oro_, faking ignorance when he knew that she had been tracking him with a satisfied smile the entire time. As he performed his typical clueless _rurouni_ act, though, her eyes softened, her smile easing into something else. "I'll take care of her. You needn't worry."

"Of course, Miss Megumi, this lowly one does not doubt for a moment that—"

"Then what _do_ you doubt, Kenshin?" That—her, Megumi using his proper name and not the usual diminutive—caught him genuinely off guard for a moment, and her eyes, black as night, moved up over his shoulder. Despite himself he turned to look back with her to where the dojo crouched, low and wide like a sleeping beast, at the other end of the yard. "I _do _understand as well as any of you, you know. It was cypress the horses were bringing in. You need it to finish fixing _that_, don't you?" He only realized after he had turned back to her, with her thin but sincere smile and her dark, keen eyes, that his heart was clenching somewhere high up in his chest.

"Kenshin! Get a fuckin' _move on, _already!"

"Remember what I said? We must at least _try_ to act normal, dear Ken," Megumi prescribed, replying to a question he hadn't asked aloud. Behind her Kaoru was stepping into her sandals, the black lacquered ones with the painted fall leaves, her purse swinging off her wrist. "We'll be at the Akabeko, and back long before you, if you hurry."

She was right. He couldn't keep this act up much longer, he already knew that, could see that much in Kaoru's eyes at least. And yet here he was hesitating, wasting precious time that he could have been using to set things right. As Kaoru jogged across the yard towards them, holding her thin shawl at her neck, Kenshin inhaled slowly through his nose and settled his soul.

"Do take care of her, Miss Megumi," he said before she arrived, and even to him his voice was off, a touch uneven. He cleared his throat then bowed his head in the doctor's direction, casting his eyes carefully as he rose at Kaoru, at the light flush still in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes, before turning. "You have my thanks."

They shut the gate up together and walked to the entrance to the market, then saw each other off their opposite ways; and both missed when either turned to look, just a quick glance, over their shoulder to watch the other depart.

* * *

There was something about visiting the Akabeko that filled her with warm comfort. At first she had associated it with coming home, mostly because of the constant parties (the grand re-opening, her return celebration, her belated birthday once Sano and Yahiko realized it had slipped them) and because the house and dojo had still been in such a state that wherever she had went she had kicked up wreckage. But even after they'd cleaned up the house she'd still felt her heart swell each time she visited, and had thought then that it was because of Tae's _shoubai _spirit, the fact that so soon after everything she'd managed to pull herself together and somehow gather enough donations and helping hands to rebuild the place, all on promises of free service.

But then, Kaoru remembered as Megumi pushed the curtain at the doorway aside and the warm, fragrant smells of the restaurant enveloped her, there was the day that she had decided it was time to get back to her life. She had drawn her _obi_ and purse strings tight and had fearlessly walked out the gates to head to market; and even though he had been cleaning the dishes, Kenshin had chased her, actually _chased her_, and with that low to the ground, impossibly fast sprint that he only used when he was deadly serious, at that. Hearing the rapid footfalls behind her she'd almost, like an idiot, frozen in place; but she'd drawn enough courage from some reservoir deep inside her to turn and look over her shoulder, and there he had been, tucking his arms into his sleeves and smiling that smile of his as he settled in beside her. And when she had secretly felt a bit overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the market, he'd taken her arm and gently steered her towards the Akabeko and, with money that she didn't know he had, treated her to lunch. It had been the first time in what felt like a long time that they'd sat down together without the others, alone, and he had poured her tea for her and told her to order whatever she pleased.

She'd known the feeling, then; the feeling of being doted on, of being sheltered, of being protected in a warm, strong but caring embrace. In the month and a half that she'd been home, the Akabeko had come to represent that to her.

And, she thought cheerlessly, a smile pasted on her face as Tsubame led them to the stairs, she _hated _it.

It had been wonderful, of course, for the first little while—having everyone bow to her every whim, with Yahiko running for the groceries and Sanosuke fixing up the gate outside and Kenshin taking her to lunch, like they were a proper couple. Until she'd realized that he was also taking her _everywhere_—the market, the Akabeko, to her bedroom door at night—and that he, along with Yahiko and Sano, wouldn't let her near her own dojo, never mind the front door. And considering the way Megumi kept showing up at the house and tutting at her—"stop complaining, Kaoru, the boys are fixing it up as we speak! And in any case you should taking all the time you can get _to recover_! Not all wounds are _physical_, you know"—she was beginning to wonder if this scheme of theirs went further than she had originally…

"Isn't this nice," Megumi called back over her shoulder as they mounted the stairs to their private booth on the just-opened second floor. Kaoru's hand clenched around the smooth wood of the railing, though it felt nothing like her _bokken. _"Much better than that sweaty old _dojo_, don't you think?"

—well. That confirmed it, and Kaoru bit her cheek to keep the smile on as she speculated on who else Kenshin would have involved in this plot of his. They sat down and Kaoru slid her hand into her purse, making sure the small triangle pouch was still there, as Megumi ordered them warm sake.

"Ah—I don't know if I feel like drinking, Megumi—"

"Nonsense. There's no reason a pretty woman can't celebrate an important friendship with a drink."

A sharp pang of guilt dashed through her for what she was about to do, her fingers twitching in her purse.

"And since you're here, you might as well join me."

Maybe not _that _sharp, Kaoru reflected as she slit the seal of the package with her thumbnail. She carefully tucked it into her sleeve as Tsubame trotted back up the stairs with the alcohol, Tae hot at her heels.

"Megumi! How did your appointment go, my dear? And Kaoru, I'm so glad to see you again! How are you, dear? Feeling alright? I'm sure you're just so happy to be home, aren't you?"

"Fine, thank you. And I've been back for a month already." She made a conscious effort not to let the proprietor's optimism infect her, though it was a struggle, especially when Tsubame shyly slid their sake onto the table and Tae shuffled onto her knees to pour it for them, talking all the while.

"Of course, dear, of course. But you know, every time we have the pleasure of serving you, it just reminds me of that _horrible_…" She trailed off, catching herself, and then laughed. "Well, of course it's just wonderful to see you! Please don't hesitate to ask our little Tsubame if you'd like anything—I'll send up some treats just this minute, don't you fret! On the house, of course, dear." She slid up to her feet and then whispered something in Tsubame's ear, and Kaoru and Megumi both began to protest.

"No more free stuff, Tae, honestly!"

"Indeed! Please, Tae, you absolutely _must _let me pay this time!"

"Poppycock!"

Megumi turned to look over her shoulder, watching Tae head towards the stairs, and Kaoru knew immediately that it was her chance. She swept her sleeve across the table, hiding the sake cup behind it and frantically tapping just a bit—_the smallest amount,_ Megumi's voice rang in her head—of fine powder into the clear, steaming alcohol inside. It dissolved almost immediately, just like the doctor had promised her those few weeks ago, and would be flavourless, especially in the warm sake. She stashed the rest up her sleeve.

"I _must _insist, Tae! We'll drive you out of business, at this rate—"

"Nobody knows my business better than me, and it's mybusiness to provide my favourite customers with the finest of hospitalities, of course!" Tae smiled generously at them, but muttered something under her breath about not bringing that karma down upon her establishment. "At any rate, please enjoy!"

Tae shooed Tsubame down the stairs, Megumi heaved a bemused sigh, and Kaoru held out the cup to her. A pleased smile crossed her face as she received it. "What are we cheering today, then?"

"Ah—" Kaoru swallowed, realizing as she picked up her own cup that she hadn't thought that far. Megumi quirked one perfectly shaped eyebrow under her perfectly blunt bangs. "Uh. To you! Being such an amazing doctor…?"

Megumi's cup hovered in front of the incredulous turn of her mouth, alcohol and that inside of it lapping at the brim. _Drink it, just drink it, _Kaoru pleaded internally while she panicked externally. "And, uh, to Tae! For her fine establishment—"

"Shouldn't we wait for Tae, then?"

"—and to me! To getting the grounds all cleaned up this morning!"

"You just stood under a tree watching the men work, you degenerate."

"_That's not what I was doing!_"

"Is that so? What do you think dear Ken would have to say if he had seen you standing there, ogling him like some common…?"

Megumi's voice grew faint in her ears, because the answer had come, unbidden, to the forefront of her mind and almost, just almost, to her lips; that he would have asked her, of course politely and obviously sweetly, if she wanted to go inside the house, out of the sun, out of the yard. Away from the dojo.

"To freedom," Kaoru blurted suddenly, cutting Megumi off, and a weighty silence fell over the table. They stared at each other with dark eyes in the dim light of the private booth, and Kaoru saw something—was it pity? No, empathy, she realized with a quick surge of shame—flicker across Megumi's face.

"Yes. To freedom," she answered after a long beat, and Kaoru's mind began in dismay, _she thinks I mean_… But she forced the thought out of her head as they raised their cups and drank. The hot liquid flowed warm over her tongue as Kaoru watched Megumi sip hers over the brim. And once the doctor had laid her empty cup back on the table, Kaoru let the resolve she had steeled herself with wash away into relief, tinged just the slightest bit by guilt; let her eyes flutter shut, the alcohol shooting warmth from her throat out to her arms and fingers, legs and toes.

"Delicious, isn't it?" Megumi said as Tsubame came clattering up the stairs with small trays of mackerel pike, dried persimmons and roasted chestnuts. Kaoru let the cup fall from her lips and then opened her eyes to find Megumi already filling it up again. "It'll help you loosen up a bit, you know. In more ways than one."

"I don't—"

Megumi winked before taking another sip, and Kaoru sputtered clumsily and then panicked, downing her second drink much too quickly. When Tsubame was out of ear shot and she had finished coughing and pounding at her chest (missing the opportunity to cover her cup with her fingers, which Megumi, sharp as always, took quick advantage of) Kaoru moaned, "I don't know what's gotten into you lately…"

"Now Kaoru, there's no need to insist on propriety when it's just the two of us, you know. I am your doctor, after all; I've seen more of you than most, isn't that true?" Kaoru begrudgingly agreed as Megumi popped a chestnut in her mouth. Kaoru followed suit as Megumi made a sound of approval and swallowed, then continued, "though hopefully, that won't be the case for much longer. And speaking of our dear Ken…"

Kaoru nearly choked. "_Honestly_, Megumi—"

"Oh, don't be so embarrassed!" Megumi leaned forward onto the table with one elbow and propped her chin on her hand, sipping slowly with the other. "Like I said, I'm your _doctor_, not to mention more… _experienced _than you in the ways of men, and it's perfectly normal to have these kinds of discussions. So, as I was—"

"Never had them with Dr. Oguni," Kaoru grumbled into her drink, and then started when Megumi kicked her under the table.

"_As I was saying_," Megumi lectured on, and Kaoru sighed and picked at the mackerel with her chopsticks, settling in for the long haul and wondering just how long it would take the medicine to work. Megumi had said an hour, but Kaoru had felt it much quicker than that, but she had only used a bit… "You really do have to take a more active role in this courtship, you know. Unfortunately for you, it seems that our dear Ken isn't yet prepared to play anything but the guileless _rurouni_ with you. Of course, that's to be expected, considering all that pent-up guilt and shame, but I did think all that longing would force his hand, after everything."

She swallowed hard and put down her chopsticks. "He's not _longing_ for anything," Kaoru argued, talking down to her drink out of hot embarrassment. After a beat of twisting her lips, she downed the drink whole. "He's just being _Kenshin_—"

"Nonsense. He's been longing for you longer than even he probably knows. In any case, you really do have to give him the opportunity to act otherwise—"

"Megumi, _please_," she interjected, pouring the woman across from her and then herself another cup to stall the conversation. "I know you're just trying to help, but it's _really _not like that..."

"I thought you said things changed after," Megumi replied, but her voice was softer, more casual, and when Kaoru met her eyes they were dark and attentive.

She looked back down quickly, rubbing her fingers along the rim of her glass and watching the quiver of the alcohol. "Before," Kaoru corrected, "I thought things had changed _before_… when he told us about, you know, Tomoe. I thought…" She hesitated, but just a bit, when she said the name, which came softly from her mouth like something hallowed, sublime. She took a quick swig of her sake, noting somewhere that if she kept drinking this quickly she'd surely jeopardize her plan, but her cheeks were burning too hot and strong to pay attention to it. Tsubame suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs and then disappeared again, and there was another brimming bottle on the table. "Anyway, I was wrong. I don't know what happened, or if I was just making it up in my head, but it's definitely not… like that. He just… he's kind, polite. He treats me like a child," she finished sourly, the same feeling—righteous indignation, tender and forlorn as a dark bruise—welling up in her chest as when father used to close her out of the dojo.

Her tiny hands had been too small to open the heavy doors, and so she had stood there, resolute in her frustration and anger and shame, listening to the whistle of cut air, the shouts, the cries, for hours. The boys walking up the path to the dojo would stare at her with dark, predatory eyes, snickering or scowling.

"He treats you like that because he worries about you." Megumi's voice sliced through Kaoru's flashback like a blade. A look passed across her face as she spoke, her lips twisting as she thought about something. Then Megumi closed her eyes, a hidden pain in the corners where her dark lashes fanned, and then she tipped the cup to her mouth. When she was done she put it back on the table and picked up new flask, motioning for Kaoru to finish her drink as well. "And what else would you expect, honestly? When was the last time that you showed him that he could treat you as anything more?"

Caught off guard and having had quite too much to drink now, Kaoru balked, jaw hanging open. "I—_what?_" She tried, belatedly, to cover her cup, but Megumi had already filled it again.

"It's a fair question. And I don't mean_ sexually_," she added when Kaoru began to sputter furiously, "so don't start on about that."

"Then what do you mean?!"

"I _mean, _when was the last time you gave Kenshin a reason to think you're anything more than a child? Considering everything, you know…"

"Ev-… _everything_?"Ah—and here it was. She almost didn't process it, having it brought up like this by Megumi of all people, and couldn't tell if her sudden anger was spurred by the alcohol or by resentment, or by both. "What's _that _supposed ta mean?"

Megumi said nothing but stared, her eyes flashing like hard, dark diamonds in the dim light even as her eyelids began to droop a bit. She didn't have to say anything, though; his name had gone unspoken amongst them ever since she came home, even though Kaoru had the courage to say it—_wanted _to say it—and did.

"You mean with _Enishi, _don't you, Megumi?" The clever, quick eyes narrowed quickly, but Megumi didn't respond immediately, the name hanging heavy in the air. Kaoru's left hand fisted around her cup, the other around her hand, and her blunt nails dug into her skin and grounded her only until Megumi moved, shifting just slightly to the side, and sighed with disappointment. Shame and rage boiled up inside her, burning her ears, in a way it hadn't in a very, very long time, but the swell was still familiar enough that it overtook her easily. "Say it, if you wanna. You're my _doctor _and we can _talk _'bout this." She realized only when the cooling sake splashed over her hands that she was shaking, and quickly swallowed what was left. "You think I din't fight back enough, do you?"

"I don't think that," Megumi replied, completely composed, and despite herself Kaoru remembered—remembered the anxiety that made her jump at every little sound, the fitful and sleepless night, the hot, shameful tears staining her sleeves as she confessed to the doctor her most private, disgraceful doubts and—

"I c'n _take care of myself_," Kaoru shouted before she could be thrown back into the inner turmoil of those first days back at home.

"Relax, Kaoru, you're—"

"And I _did, _remember? I did!It's unfair, how ev'ryb'dy look at me now, just 'cause of—Yahiko jus' goes straight to Maekawa's now, doesn't even _ask_ me, and Kenshin—he looks at me like—" Her voice caught on a hard, painful hitch in her throat, and Kaoru realized only then that she was about to cry. Megumi watched her carefully as she took a shuddering breath and forced herself to composure. "I'm _not _a child," she repeated, finally, trying to replace the high emotion in her voice with cold steel, though she wavered a bit when she finally recognized the sad, wise look in Megumi's eyes.

"Relax. I know. And you're drunk. God, I forgot that you're a lightweight." Megumi breathed out on a sigh and brushed her hair over her shoulder, resting her hand on her neck and looking down. "And I _am_ sorry, Kaoru, for their actions and for my own. That was… unfair." Kaoru pursed her lips and shifted uncomfortably in her seat but, after a moment's deliberation, nodded quickly. "But you have to understand that he _forces _himself to look at you like that," she added, pouring them another glass each, as Kaoru groaned in dismay.

"Not this again—I told you, there's _nothin'—_"

Megumi looked up with sharp eyes, cutting her off. "You're a fool if you think that. You know as well as I do that it's all that guilt and shame over his past that keeps him from… well. That dumb, innocent _rurouni _act is just that, an act—a cover for a man's passion. Probably thinks he's too, you know, _stained_," she punctuated with a dismissive hand gesture, "to even think of you that way—"

"What way?"

"As a _man_ does a _woman_," Megumi sighed obviously, lifting up her cup and waiting for Kaoru to do the same.

"He's not _like _that, Megumi—"

"He's a human like any other, isn't he?" She retorted as Kaoru drank. "And a man, at that, even though he's too afraid to show let it show, considering what happened the last time."

"I dunno what you mean—"

"You know, before Kyoto. With Saito."

"That wazznt Kenshin," Kaoru replied surely, "that was _Battousai_—"

"My god, are you serious, raccoon?" Kaoru didn't immediately respond to Megumi, for the shock of hearing the title roll off her tongue so easily overwhelmed her and sent her head spinning—or maybe it was the alcohol, which she took another swig at. "They're the _same _person."

"… what?"

"_They're the same person_," Megumi repeated, and when Kaoru stared and then quirked her head in confusion, the doctor blinked slowly, heavily, in disbelief and slumped backwards against the wall. "You at the very least I thought would understand…"

"Understand _what? _Listen, listen," Kaoru interrupted, squinting as she tried to make sense of the mess in her head. "You don' know what you're talkin' about, Megumi. Kenshin is Kenshin. Battousai is… _was _Batt—"

"_—is _Kenshin," Megumi finished, and Kaoru stumbled over her thick tongue. "They're the _same _man, Kaoru, just… just a different name."

Kaoru thought about it for a second, then shook her head as Megumi muffled a yawn behind her hand. "No… no. Kenshin _turned _to Battousai when Saito came, see—"

"Turned to, what exactly? A crazy, bloodthirsty, indiscriminate killer? I was there too, remember," she said pointedly, stretching an arm above her head. "All he did was protect his family and his home, which is what any man would have. _Sagara _did."

"That's not—_Kenshin _told me, he said, he said before he went to Kyoto that when he fought with Saito it showed that… the manslayer was still _inside _him—that's what _he_ said."

"Oh, of _course _he's the one who knows it least… who… _he's _the one who doesn't want to admit it most." Megumi licked at her lips, looking a little confused, and then shook her head. "And don't tell me you honestly think that a woman like _Tomoe_ would sacrifice herself for a _manslayer_."

"Well," Kaoru stammered, "that's 'cause…"

"That's 'cause he was _Kenshin_. You should learn to accept it, you know," Megumi mumbled, her words beginning to slur. "If you really do care for him 's much 's he does you."

Megumi leaned over onto the table, resting her chin on one arm, and the alcohol flushed hot through Kaoru's system. "I really don' think you know what you're talkin' about, Megu—"

"Oh, enough—you know 's well as me. 's all in the eyes," she explained as she settled in, and Kaoru opened her mouth to keep arguing but then Megumi's eyelids, with those long, perfect lashes, fanned shut against her rouged cheeks. "'s how he looks at you… 'course, changes aren't unusual, but he's not _that _old… maybe 'cause of changes in his intern'l chemistry…" Megumi was talking to herself, muttering quietly, and her eyes fluttered open as if she had realized something. "'s the British, isn't it?"

Kaoru opened her mouth to reply, then closed it when she realized she had no idea what Megumi meant. "What?"

"The British, they say," she swallowed, "they say the eyes 'r windows to the soul. Maybe it's 'cause of his internalization… not physical, then, but psychological?" She over-annunciated in order to not stumble on the words, though she didn't seem to realize it. "Maybe he doesn't even know…"

"Know _what_?" Her head spun as she sat up a bit to shake Megumi's shoulder. "Hey, he d'sn't know _what_?"

"His eyes—the way they change," Megumi said around a large, jaw-cracking yawn, and batted Kaoru's hand away. "You know, the… 's a flash of…" She pressed her eyes shut, focusing. "… amber."

"A-amber?" Kaoru repeated dumbly, voice soft and shaky.

"Like with _Saito_," Megumi said in a tired tone.

"But… tha's not…" she stammered, and then barely managed to catch the sake flask that Megumi knocked over as she wrapped her arms around her head. The doctor didn't even notice, her eyelids quivering and then falling shut.

"… and the _voice_… I was there, too, y'know…" Her voice was small, distant, muffled into her sleeves. "I was there too… w'him … but he nev'r looks at me like that… not like _he _does at you…"

"But tha's _not _how it _is, _I said—!"

"'s all in th'eyes," she exhaled on a sigh, and her lips stilled around the words, and then was silent.

The light was dim on the second floor, and in the air drifted the thready notes of a _koto_ from downstairs or outside. There was the muffled clatter of a dropped dish, a few barks of far-away laughter as a group of drunks stomped in. Curled up in the darkness of the booth, Megumi's breathing was shallow and soft as Kaoru reached over to shake her again.

"Hey…" Kaoru tried a bit harder, shaking her on both shoulders. "Hey! Me_gu_mi! Why're you…" Something tickled her arm, the one in front of Megumi's mouth, and Kaoru drew back as the tiniest sound came from the back of the doctor's throat. She slowly readjusted her shoulders and then burrowed her head further into the dark cavern of her arms.

"… sleeping," Kaoru breathed, realization striking her like a bolt from the blue, and then wavered for a long minute. Finally she reached out and placed two careful, tentative fingertips at the triangle of pale skin exposed between the fall of her hair and the neck of her kimono, and felt the strong, thriving pulse there, despite her shallow breathing. Even through the warm buzz of the alcohol, that was enough to set her sudden nerves a bit more at ease, to quicken her recollected resolve.

"'m sorry, Megumi." Kaoru slowly forced herself from the booth, her feet feeling miles away. "'ll send Sano to come get you later, okay? Promise. I jus' gotta… do this. For me." Pausing for a beat, Kaoru put her hand on Megumi's shoulder; it rose and fell gently under her palm, and she realized, suddenly and without reason, that she had never seen Megumi look so unguarded. Guilt, strong and sure but undercut by the alcohol and the hastening hammer of her excited heart, grew in her alongside the strange light that shone in her eyes.

"I know you'd understand, if…" Kaoru mumbled, then stopped the words by swallowing them and the thickness in her throat. But before leaving she settled her shawl—thin but still warm from her own flushed heat—around Megumi's shoulders.

Kaoru stole out the back way, blinking into the sunlight. Twenty minutes later, after dealing with the drunks from behind the shield of her serving tray, Tsubame found the doctor alone, fast asleep amongst the empty sake jars and one fallen package of sleeping powder.


	2. Part II

_Author's Note: Thank you so much for all your reviews and criticism! In particular I appreciate the point that Scarred Sword Heart brought up about Kenshin sensing Kaoru-I had to think about that one!-and the Wandering Pen's comments about Sano's potty mouth. After a re-read I admit that you've got a point, and I hope I've turned it down some here... though maybe not so much towards the end.  
_

_In any case, this chapter was ridiculously hard for me to write, especially considering it includes _the _scene that made me want to write this story in the first place. But! Here it is, ridiculously long, as always. I hope you enjoy, and please with the concrit!_

_And all the secret bits (well... most of them) should fall into place with the next chapter..._

* * *

**II **

Now she knew how Misao felt, Kaoru thought sensibly, reasonably even, as she stealthily pressed her back up against the corners and spied down the narrow streets of her neighbourhood. Though the Oniwabanshu also made it look a lot easier; so far she'd knocked over a cart of radishes trying to hide from Mrs. Maekawa in the market, had given away her position by soundly scathing a pair of boys for tormenting a cat (until she'd remembered that ninjas were supposed to be _silent as shadows_; then she'd snapped her mouth shut and melted back against the wall, and had tripped over the same cat she'd just saved), and had generally done a very poor job of it. Even if she had managed to put Megumi out of commission for just a little bit—and the thought was accompanied by a swell of guilt that she immediately pushed back down—Kaoru had to admit that Okina still would have been humiliated to have her a ninja.

But there was a certain allure in sneaking around like this, even if she wasn't quite at the level to jump from rooftop to rooftop or to climb trees, or even to make it up the small steps into the empty alley beside the Ueno house. At least no one was there to see her trip over her sandals and end up splayed disgracefully on the stairs—

"Hey, hey! Who's out there?" Mr. Ueno leaned up over the fence and peered down, concern flashing across his grizzled features when he saw her gathering her skirts around her. "Lil' Kaoru? What're you doin' down there?"

"Ahahah, Mr. Ueno! What a coincidence!" Kaoru laughed much too loudly as she scrambled up, and continued laughing as she gave a sharp kick to the treacherous step. His weathered face only grew more worried. "I was just, um, you know, inspecting the stairs! What are you doing around this part of town?!"

"I… live here? Next door to you?" He replied, almost as confused as she looked. "What're you inspectin' my stairs for, girl?"

Her nervous laugh caught in her throat and she stared up at him, mouth hanging open. He stared back down at her, bushy eyebrows slowly climbing higher and higher into his hairline.

"Neigbourhood… watch?" Kaoru offered slowly, cringing as she said it.

"Watchin' my steps?" Mr. Ueno responded without missing a beat. "For what?"

"… prowlers?"

"Only prowler I see right now is you, child," the old man replied gruffly, "unless you mean that damn alley cat that's been diggin' up my mums… You alright, though, Kaoru?" His voice was lined with concern like the wrinkles at his eyes, and he looked down the alleyway to where their fences met, to the roof of the Kamiya dojo rising up from his neighbour's yard. Kaoru took the moment to furtively look everywhere else, waiting for Yahiko or Sanosuke to barge around the corner and catch her red-handed. "I been hearin' the racket from that dojo of yours. Startin' to wonder if everythin's, you know, goin' okay for you and yours. Tell the truth, ever since that Battousai incident, me and the missus've noticed some shady characters roamin' the streets..."

Kaoru jerked her head back to him, her heart suddenly in her throat. "Recently?"

"Other than you and that damn mongrel cat?" She flushed even darker than she already was, and he shook his head. "Naw, girl. Not since that nonsense with the hot air balloons and your… well, you know." He paused, looking awkwardly into the distance, and rubbed under his nose. Kaoru was about to ask him what he meant, but then he began again. "… honestly, though. You doin' alright? You need help with anythin', you know you just say the word. Our families've been friends for a long time now, and we know that times've been rough to you and yours… And to be true, me and the missus, we've been worryin' about if there's none of that ol' business goin' on. You know how your ol' father would feel about—"

"There's _nothing_ to worry about, Mr. Ueno," Kaoru interrupted hastily, waving her hands about. "I swear on… on the ideals of my father's Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu that—"

"It's yours too, now," he added, and she reddened in embarrassment overtop of the alcohol flush. "Your father'd be proud, though, girl, that… little _sonuva bitch!_"

"Hey! Nobody calls my father a—_aah!" _She jumped as something brushed against her leg, and tripped again on the step, nearly landing on the cat that had followed her down the alley. It wound itself around her scrabbling feet as Mr. Ueno sputtered.

"_Hey! _That's the li'l bastard now!"

"I thought I told you to stop following me!" Kaoru shouted, trying to skirt away from the stray without kicking it. "How am I supposed to be a ninja when you keep _following_ me?!"

"A _nin —_is that beast yours, Kaoru?! These're prize winnin' mums, child, _prize winning! _Pride of the _neighbourhood_, and you should know what that means!" Sputtering, he clambered down from his fence. "That's it, I'm gettin' my shovel—"

"Either I'm drunk, or you're a lot better at this than I'll ever be," Kaoru groused, sweeping the cat up into her arms and disappearing down the alley before the old man could catch them. "And you really shouldn't be eating his chrysanthemums, you know, they're not very good for you. Go after the mice or birds or something instead!" She skidded to a stop, her sandals kicking up dust, in front of a gate cut that was cut into the back fence, and then glanced about quickly before crouching to set the cat on its feet. "Go on! Scat! I don't have time for…" It purred and curled around her ankles. "… oh, alright, I'll bring you some fish after I'm done, but just _go!"_

The stray gave her an injured look when she nudged it with her foot, then trotted off. Kaoru heaved out a frustrated sigh then breathed in deeply to steel herself, and put her shoulder against the seams in the fence and pushed.

The back gate swung open with a low creak. She waited, her back pressed up against the fence, until she heard and felt it bump against the other side. When no one shouted out from the yard she leaned her head in to peer around the corner, and the grounds were empty—she couldn't see past the backside of the storehouse on her right, but around the left side of the house she could just make out the front gate, still closed. And if she tilted her shoulders in through the back gate a bit more, craning her head and twisting at the waist to look further in, down along the side of the fence, she could see the…

The _dojo_,Kaoru thought triumphantly, her head rushing with the sake buzz and the anticipation and the guilty exhilaration of sneaking into the house—into _her own house!—_and promptly tripped through the gate. The momentum sent her soul racing, though, and she caught herself as she careened across the yard towards the house, only noticing that she'd lost one shoe when she reached the porch and had just the right sandal to shuck off. She didn't care; her blood was singing, heart pounding high and hard and happy in her chest as she stumbled down the hall, and she let out a little _whoop _when she finally undid the tie to her obi and could unfurl it, twirling herself as she went, her kimono halfway undone by the time she made it to her room. She had no fear of being seen; this was her house, where she had grown, and for the few brief, majestic moments before the men would come banging back into the yard with the wood and their eyes that looked at her like a child, she was alone, she was _home_, andwas free to do what every fiber, every inch of her had been yearning to do since Enishi had cornered her in the smoke and swept her away from it.

To _train_.

She turned, undressing in the open door of her room, and looked to the dojo as she snapped her arms into her sleeves. She would apologize to Megumi afterwards; it wasn't right to treat a friend in such a way, she knew that, but they had been doing the very same to her for too long now—squirreling her away from the dojo, never leaving her alone in the house. She didn't bother to change the bindings on her chest, though they had loosened, and stepped into her hakama. The awkward, anxious tension that had festered in the house since she'd returned still sat like an angry spirit on her shoulders, but resolve bolstered her as she snapped the ties shut at her waist and let her bare feet carry her out of her room and off the deck. They didn't understand; even if they were just trying to protect her, she _needed _to train; needed, especially now, after everything, to feel the security of her bokken in her hand, to feel her dojo welcoming her home. She moved across the empty yard, avoiding the scrap wood and the tools scattered about, to the large, low building that sat in the corner against the fence. She'd promised herself a long time ago that she would never feel like a stranger in her own home again. She _needed_ to practice. Just before stepping up onto the dojo porch, she reached up to toll the ribbon from her hair, leaving just the thick cord. It fluttered in a shock of blue to the dusty ground behind her. Her Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu was _waiting_ for her.

She stopped just in front of the door.

The wood of the deck was smooth under the soles of her feet and she suddenly realized how dusty the yard was, and rubbed the dirt onto the legs of her dark hakama. Her hair was loose; she jerked her ponytail tighter at the top of her head. She paused, looking up and swallowing hard as the strange tension in her shoulders only mounted. She'd thought it would have vanished the second she got into her training clothes, but… Kaoru breathed out, steeling herself. She'd come too far to turn back now, and she was wasting time, precious time.

The doors slid open, catching only a bit under her fingers, and she stepped into the gloom. Behind her, in the distance, the house and storehouse—a pile of timber that she hadn't seen stacked against its far wall—watched her vanish into the darkness.

* * *

"… this _really_ isn't necessary, that it is not, Sanosuke." Kenshin went to rub at his aching shoulder, but before he could Sano grabbed it for him and jerkd him down into his huddle with Yahiko. Kenshin gritted his teeth and then, noticing Mr. Kinoshita glaring at them through the gap between Sano and Yahiko's heads, hid his grimace behind a kindly smile and an incline of his head. It didn't work; in fact, he only seemed to look even more mightily impatient and annoyed at the conspiratorial glances Yahiko and Sano were shooting at him.

In the final hour of the day the port market buzzed loudly around them, the gulls hawking louder than the vendors shouting their wares. Men ran to and fro the long docks in the distance and the ships anchored there, their sails fluttering in the autumn wind. The air smelled of fish and salt and sweat, and the slow descent of the sun in the cloudless skies cast the rough seas in shades of blue and yellow.

"The price's still _double _what he told us last week, Kenshin," Yahiko hissed into his ear, and Kenshin felt something pop in his knee at the same time that he realized he had been hauled down to the boy's height. "I mean, he did offer to have his men carry the rest of it home free of charge—"

"He did?" Kenshin asked optimistically, feeling the strain of the first load where it had cut into his shoulder as he looked up to spot Kinoshita's young, energetic assistants. "That would certainly be a great help, that it—"

"We don't _need _any of his damn minions to carry it home for us!" Sano jerked Kenshin's head back into the huddle, and he was fairly certain from the tick under Kinoshita's left eye that the merchant had heard him. Behind him a large steamboat skimmed the sea, pulling up to the docks to release its many passengers that were lining the deck. "Not with the three of us, right?"

Kenshin opened his mouth to politely suggest otherwise, but Yahiko cut in first with a sagely nod and a certain _right!_

"See! The kid gets it. What we _need _is a better _price! _Damn man's tryin' ta _rob us blind_, Kenshin!"

"One appreciates your concern, Sano," Kenshin began diplomatically, ignoring his own pressing need to stand up straight, "especially considering that the funds are not _ours _but are in fact—"

"Doesn't matter _whose_ it is, what matters is that we're not givin' _all _this cash to this thief!" Sano said overtop of him, loud enough again for Kinoshita to hear. "I mean, d'ya know what we could _do _with this sorta money?!"

"One _sincerely_ hopes you're not about to say 'gamble,'" Kenshin deadpanned, ignoring Yahiko's cataloging of all the upgrades they could make to the dojo and the equipment. As his own patience began to wear as thin as Kinoshita's, Sano, to his credit, shot Kenshin a glare.

"Y'know, I'd expect a li'l more gratitude from ya, considering it's _your _money I'm tryin' to save here."

"One was under the impression that it didn't matter whose money it was, that one was," Kenshin replied offhandedly, watching over their heads as a large, ornate carriage drawn by a pair of sleek grey mares pull up to the docks, and because of it he almost missed the paroxysm of irritation on his friend's face. "In any case, what would this lowly one require the money for, other than fixing the dojo?"

He'd meant it rhetorically, but Sano and Yahiko apparently had not picked up on that fact. "Oh, I dunno," the boy replied, "there's this thing that people do, you know? I think you've heard of it, it's called a _wedding_?"

"To a certain _li'l missy?_" Sano added.

"Hopefully _some time _in the near futu—"

"_Lord Kinoshita,_" Kenshin called out, his face as red as his hair, and stood up abruptly to throw their arms off of his shoulders. He grabbed the small purse out of Sanosuke's fists. "Please forgive the delay—one is _more _than happy to recompense you for the full balance, that one is!"

"_Dammit, Kenshin,_" Sanosuke howled behind him as he strode over to the merchant and dropped the purse in his hands. "He was just about ta _drop the price—!_" After a quick, shocked moment, Kinoshita grinned toothily and waved an open arm at the rest of the wood piled up on the ground behind him, and Kenshin had the distinct and aggravating realization that Sanosuke was probably right. He pushed it out of his mind, though, as Kinoshita's young assistants gathered a section of the wood and helped him to arrange his across his shoulder.

"One will see you two at home, _with _the rest of the wood, that one will," he said after he stood and readjusted the load. They ignored him, which wasn't surprising.

"Hey! We can at least still get it delivered, right?!" Kenshin heard the boy demand as he turned to make his way down the crowded market path.

"Ah—was that part of the agreement, Mr. Himura?"

Behind him Sano let out a stream of invectives, but Kenshin was already looking homeward, dodging the workmen and their many customers. And following just behind him was the horse-drawn carriage. Kenshin paid no attention to it, though, especially after it turned to visit the marketplace, and so he did not see how the glossy grey mares startled and stopped when a distraught doctor burst out from a tall, busy restaurant and lurched down the street, her dark eyes flying across the market in panic, her black hair flying behind her.

* * *

The dojo of her memories was always glowing. Even in the summer, when the sunlight that beat just outside the doors was so bright that it pitched the rest of the hall into dim and hazy obscurity, the wood seemed to hold and radiate the light.

But the dark, still hall that she walked into was so incongruous from that images that Kaoru stilled in shock just inside the entrance, forgetting to slide the door shut behind her. Even the fading daylight that inched in around her, casting her figure across the floor, didn't seem to be enough to light the room. The dojo had been shut up so tightly and for so long that the corners were wreathed in darkness, the air heavy and thick with shadow and still, almost lifeless.

Even without the light, though, she could tell that things had been moved. The armour was piled up in an indistinct heap in one corner with a few of the practice sword racks, a stack of _shinai_ propped up haphazardly against the wall. One of the sliding doors that faced the fence was out of its track and others still had holes ripped through them, and these let in spots and slants of delicate, dust-moted sunset that slid over the tools and the wood that had been left behind. And the floor—_the floor_! Her bare toes curled in a spasm of dismayed guilt on top of a thick cake of dust and dirt. They haven't been _cleaning_ you, Kaoru thought, dismayed beyond reason by the sudden realization that she had never, not even _once_ in all the time she'd spent impatiently waiting for the men to finish their work, asked Yahiko to wipe down the floors. She could feel it sticking to the soles of her feet with each step that she took into the middle of the room.

Outside the sun was burning lower and lower on the horizon, its belly hovering just above the fence, but the light that made it through the cracks and tears in the doors was faint, not strong enough to reach to the far side of the hall, to the alter high up on the wall. She stopped and bowed to it even though she couldn't see the hand-written scroll and the old sword set, the bowl of sake in front of the paper charm from the Tokyo _shoukonsha_. They'd have to replace the charm soon, she thought, staring at her toes, and before it, the offerings… she couldn't remember the last time they'd been changed, which was strange, because she remembered standing alone at the shrine, a heavy haori too big for herwrapped around her shoulders to keep her warm against the biting chill, the wooden sword an unfamiliar weight that she shifted to her other hand in order to purchase the talisman. To family health and prosperity, the smiling priest had said, and she has bristled sensitively as if he had scrubbed salt into the wound, her fingers squeezing around the rigid, ungiving wood.

Kaoru blinked hard, forcing the memories out of her head, and stilled her heart by reminding herself for the hundredth time not to dwell on the past. She just needed to practice, and everything would fall back into place, just like it had before. Just like it always had.

It took her longer than it should have to find her beloved bokken; they'd moved it to a dusty corner with a rack of padding. The worn, smooth grain didn't warm up as quickly as it used to in between her hands, and she felt the worry well its way up through her bones and sinews and skin. But she swallowed and walked back to the dark center of the room, her toes curling on the dirty floor, her spine pushing up and her shoulders straightening as she brought her wooden sword up and forced her breathing to slow and deepen. It had only been a few weeks since the last time she had practiced; she knew this rationally, but that didn't seem to help still her soul.

"Just breathe," Kaoru told herself, her voice alone in the dark, and exhaled on the downswing.

A little muscle twinged in her arm, letting her know that her grip was wrong, and she stopped, rearranged her hands, and tried again.

This time the strike stopped a bit too early, her shoulders in the wrong position. Her breath came out in a huff when she realized it, and she flexed her grip on the hilt as her mind raced. Maybe it was the sake… but she didn't have all day, they'd return soon. She had to hurry, _had_ to…

When her feet were too far apart on the third strike, Kaoru felt the panic seize her, creeping over her shoulders and hissing in her ear. "You're just overthinking it," she told herself with more certainty than she felt, but her stance was wrong, her grip was wrong, her swing was wrong, doubt whispered to her, and she felt like a child, like she had when she'd first picked up the sword. And it was hard to ignore and harder to forget the way it had felt to be cornered, to know that it wasn't enough, to know that the way she was, wasn't _strong _enough—

Kaoru pressed her eyes shut, straining to force that litany of pathetic thoughts out of her mind, the same thoughts that had been circling her in her head, shouting at her every chance they got, for months now.

But if she wasn't strong enough…

The thoughts hollered in her ear, and sounded like something from long ago, like the roar of a crowd, like the clash of a sword, like—

Kaoru made a frustrated sound at the back of her throat, then slapped herself on the cheek, and the sting grounded her, returned her to reality, to her dojo. She turned abruptly to the face the far side of the dojo, to the sign that was wreathed in darkness but that she knew read _Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu_. The Living Heart style. The sword that revitalizes.

Yes. She had still been a child, Kaoru could admit now, when the sign had changed. But she wasn't a child now.

_When was the last time that you showed him that he could treat you as anything more? _The echo of Megumi's voice resonated in her head, and shifted, pitching lower, gentler. _When was the last time you could say that?_

Megumi was as wise as he'd been. Kaoru was adult enough now to admit that, no matter how embarrassing and frustrating it was to admit defeat to her.

And if she adult enough to admit that, she was adult enough to stop running from shadows, from memories. She was adult enough to pull herself together. She was the _adjutant master_ of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu, after all.

When Kaoru raised her sword again the lines of her arms and shoulders had changed. The chaos in her eyes, shining blue in the darkness as they adjusted to the dim, settled and was replaced by a calm mettle. She fixed her focus on the far end of the dojo, on the altar, and sucked in a steadying breath as she began to reach her spirit past the grip of her hands down the long, clean edge of her bokken, as she began to raise her arms again for the strike, as she began to see through the darkness the shapes of the sign, the scroll, her father's swords in the altar—

And just to the right of it, in the shadows, the folding screen.

Kaoru stopped right before the strike, suspended on the ball of her feet, her sword still arching over her head, and then rolled back onto her heels.

Her mother's folding screen—Kaoru had to squint at it through the gloom to recognize the patterns of the red and gold cranes—that had vanished from her room the morning after she'd come home.

"What in the world," she mumbled to herself, brushing the hair from her eyes and walking towards it, "is it doing _here_?"

She'd been angry at about its disappearance in those first few days at home, when the dojo has still been strewn halfway across the yard. It had been her mother's and hers before that, and its theft had crystallized in her the unnamed fear and anger that they were hiding something from her, hiding something from her in her own house. She'd yelled at Yahiko about it, and he'd hemmed and hawed and then admitted that he'd borrowed it but wouldn't say more, and when she'd stormed over to Kenshin instead he'd blinked a few times—that's how she'd known that he hadn't known—and then confirmed that yes, they had borrowed it for a time, and that it would be returned in short order. She'd still been seething about it the next morning when the wind had picked up and had carried their voices from where they worked on the demolished dojo porch to her room; Kenshin chiding him quietly about if he remembered what Megumi had said about acting normal, explaining how stealing things from her room wouldn't help, and she'd clutched in feeble frustration at her blankets, when Yahiko had shouted that he hadn't stolen it, he "_just didn't want to see it anymore!_"

She hadn't been able to figure out what Yahiko hated so much about the screen—it was quite pretty, actually, simple, but nice—but had wondered, laying suddenly stupid in her room that still smelled of him, if it had something to do with the nights he'd spent alone in her bed.

Kaoru had realized, then, what they'd been hiding from her; the dumb recognition that of course they'd been as affected by her departure as she had. Maybe even more. Ever since she'd returned they'd all been playing the hero—Kenshin smiling at her every chance he got, like everything was normal, even though his eyes were bruised from all the sleepless nights he spent on patrol around the yard; Sanosuke suddenly bringing food over instead of leaving with it, like he cared how much of hers he ate; and Yahiko—well. He'd stopped screaming obscenities about her looks and her cooking, and the fact that she _missed _them may have been the worst part of it all. Maybe Enishi really _had _made her unstable, like they all seemed to think, pussyfooting around her like she was some fragile bud vase that would shatter down to the floor if they stepped too hard.

But no; whatever Enishi may have done to her, seemed to have affected them worse. So Kaoru had decided to let them tip-toe around her, let them play the hero to her damsel in distress if they wanted to, at least for a little while longer, because she knew they _needed _to. They _needed _to do it to keep themselves together, and the realization resolved her against asking any more questions, against pushing them too hard for the truth. They'd told her enough about Enishi's Jinchuu—what had happened after he'd whisked her away; that he'd damaged the dojo and then left some momento of hers there for them to find, and that they'd struggled for leads and to recollect themselves until Misao and Aoshi had arrived to help. They needed time to heal, too.

Though for the life of her, she didn't know why it required her mother's beautiful screen, shoved into the dark end of the dojo. It was covered in dust already, her fingers smudging away a fine layer from the lacquered frame as she drew it aside to make they sure that they hadn't inadvertently punched any holes in it, and—

Behind it there was a hole.

Kaoru paused, then pushed the screen shut and leaned it against the wall. She fell down onto her haunches and went to put her bokken down on the floor, thought better of it lying in the dirt and tucked it across her lap instead.

They'd torn down a section of the wood than ran halfway up in the wall, leaving only the pockmarked white plaster behind it. It was hard to see in the dark, but the hole sat low, just a bit more than a hand's breadth from the floor, and when she ran her fingers around the edges of it they were longer than wide, sharp at the top and bottom and crumbling away at the sides. A sword, then, she gradually realized, and shuffled closer to push her palm against the gap.

Her heart began to pound behind her ribs, and her head spun with more than just the weakening alcohol in her blood. They'd found a hole. In her dojo wall, they'd found a hole.

A faint drone filled her ears. It didn't make sense. She would have noticed something like this, it would have had to have been here for _years_. Unless—she remembered how she'd used some of her small inheritance to hire a few locals to patch the place up, and maybe they'd just covered it over instead of actually fixing it. It was the most reasonable explanation, wasn't it, she thought slowly, feeling under the hot throb of the blood in her hand the wound in the wall. It would explain why it seemed so fresh.

The drone became a distant buzz as her eyes unfocused, looking at something in the distance.

It had been a large sword, or a hard strike, or both. The blade had managed to push its way through the cypress and into the plaster with enough force to go at least a knuckle's worth into the wall, though it could have been more; any deeper than that and the plaster had turned to powder, packing the gap and stopping her finger. Yet the edges were strange—pronounced on both ends. More of the wall crumbled away with the slightest pressure from the pad of her thumb. If the wielder had tried to work the blade loose by prying it up and down… her eyes shone in the gloom, and though she looked at where her hand rested on the smear of shadow on the wall, her focus was somewhere else, a distant, dark, far away place. Outside the sun was resting on the rooftops, just beginning to flush the western sky in oranges and pinks and to throw long shadow from the pines and the weather vane. But inside the dojo, the darkness gathered in the corners and in the mark on the wall and in her eyes.

It must have been a hateful and wretched attack.

But it couldn't have been…

Kaoru's fingers flinched, and the hum in her ears—_father_, she remembered, and him—rose to a pitch, so that she didn't hear gate open over the shouting in her memory.

* * *

He was glad to see that while evening was approaching, the skies had not darkened and the winds had not picked up. The weather would hold, at least until tomorrow, and Kenshin was grateful for it; for the weather, and for the pale orb of the moon in the colouring sky, for the smell of fall on the crisp cooling air, and most of all for the wood he was carrying. The lumber was heavy and unwieldy, yes, but and the fresh and fragrant smell of it stirred his spirit and he'd had enough practice with the first load to know to give a shout of caution each time he turned a corner so that he wouldn't knock anyone senseless. Even the dull fire burning in his laboured lungs and the hot sweat rolling down between his shoulders felt agreeable to him now, because with the wood, they would be able, finally, after weeks, after what felt like an _eternity_, to return to the way things had been. _She _would be able to return to the way she had been.

And so be it if there was a hop in his step, a little too joyful of a smile on his face as he shouted out breathlessly ahead of him. He adjusted his arm around his last load—Sano and Yahiko could manage the rest, even if Kinoshita cheated them out of delivery—and then turned the corner with quick, light steps that belied his age and aches and sprains. Kenshin knew that he was no spring chicken—though, he added internally, neither was Mr. Ueno, who peered at him around his front gate—and that there was probably some law out there that said it was objectionable for someone his age, nevermind _him _to be this happy. But decency and polite society be damned, because now he could right the wrongs he'd brought down upon her. Now he could make her smile like she used to, in that way that lit the sky like the sun and the stars. And a weight lifted off his shoulders—ridiculously, absurd considering the load he was carrying, but wonderfully all the same—when he didn't remember to stop himself from thinking about her lips lighting the night.

And so it was reasonable that he ignored Mr. Ueno's voice following at his back, shouting something about a cat and the alley that ran behind their houses. He still had enough wit about him, though, to shout back jovially, "your garden is… lovely this year… that it is, Lord Ueno!"

"Eh?" The old man looked back to his garden and then again through the front gate at his neighbour's back, his free hand raised in a congenial wave. "You see the drawin' from last year's contest, then, Mr. Himura? The mums'll get first place this year, we're hopin—!" But the red blaze of his hair bounced away down the street, leaving only clatter of the lumber ringing out in the evening air, and Mr. Ueno figured that the man was smart enough not to keep that beastly stray around, anyway. He turned back to his gardening, mumbling with a withered smile to his flowers about things blooming out of season.

The gate was still closed tightly when he stopped, and Kenshin smiled at it around his heavy breathing. Good; he'd beaten them home. He took a second to compose himself, gradually blowing the air out of his lungs through pursed lips until he felt his heartbeat settle, and then rearranged the wood across both shoulders and turned to his side. With the ends of the lumber he nudged open the gate and carefully slotted himself into the yard, and travelled around the far side of the house to the shed, where he'd set down the first pile. The second load of cypress clattered loudly when he dropped it, and the sound was as satisfying as the pop of his shoulder under his hand.

It had been a while since Kenshin had been on the grounds alone. The breeze rustled through the trees and his hair as he climbed the steps to the storehouse and fetched an oilcloth, in case the storm snuck up on them overnight, but he was more certain now that it wouldn't. The sky was spotless, the moon hovering against the beginnings of dusk. After tucking the cloth in around the wood Kenshin stood for a moment, savoring the silence and the satisfying sting of the day's hard work. It wasn't finished yet, of course—the night would come on more quickly now that the seasons had shifted, and he still had dinner to make, something substantial enough to sate Sano's and Yahiko's appetites, and needed to heat the bathwater. Though best not in that order, he admitted as he shrugged his sticky shirt apart from his back, and then began walking to the bathhouse that sat between the dojo and the house.

When he cleared the edge of the storehouse, a bird flashed by the corner of his eye, flitting by low to the ground, just outside the back gate.

His foot stopped in front of him, his weight still carrying him forward even as he turned his head. Through the small gap in the gate—the tiny, cramped one that they barely ever used—flashed a cat, lanky and feral. It flickered by in a blink of black and white, in chase, and vanished down the alley just as quickly as it had appeared.

Just below the swinging gate, almost hidden in the sparse underbrush that grew along the fence, was a black sandal. Tipped on its side in the grass, the little yellow and red leaves painted on the toe pointed towards the house.

The bath, dinner, everything ground to a halt in his head as he turned his head and saw, just under the corner of the porch, the other shoe, and a sock. A purse, strings tied tight. Scuffed dust, the same that she had been sweeping earlier, and footsteps leading to the.

Somehow he turned to follow them, forced his heavy legs to take him forward, but only managed one graceless step as the numb shock climbed up past his frozen feet to his waist and clutched at his lungs when he realized what was—that on the ground in front of the dojo, fluttering in the breeze, there was—

The indigo ribbon lifted and rustled with the southern wind, and shuddered, just once, towards the open dojo doors.

"Kaoru—"

* * *

She remembered being with him, in the dojo. Remembered the tension that cut the air. The doors opening, her father a shining shadow lit by the last flares of the autumn sun. And then voices.

"_Uncle…"_

"_I've been recalled." _

_The letter in his hand, knock, knock, knocking at the gate._

"_When do you leave?" The tournament, in ten days. _

"_Tomorrow."_

_Anger, sorrow, resentment. "But you won't survive, if you fight like that!" _

"_Cousin!"_

"_They're samurai, like us. If I can revitalize one, I'll be fulfilled. When was the last time you could say that?"_

"_Then face me." The clatter of a scabbard on the floor. "Show me this power to revitalize. Show me your Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu!"_

"… Kaoru…"

_The voices breaking, crashing, flowing into each other in her memories._

"_I had hoped that it wouldn't come to this."_

"_Cousin! Don't!"_

"Kaoru."

"_My heir." _

"_You're too kind, cousin."_

"_That's not true. He's too kind."_

"_My daughter."_

"_I'll never be like you." _

"_This is my last lesson."_

"Kaoru!"

"Never mistake power for strength," she breathed, and her sound of her own voice was distant, the words coming off her lips in a faraway whisper, more mantra than meaning. Her name echoed in her ears as she slowly opened her heavy eyes, laden by memory, and in reflex her fingers squeezed around the soothing weight of her bokken—

"Kaoru!"

The shout reverberated through the silent dojo, and she swallowed around her dry tongue and blinked the past from her eyes. Her bokken—she'd put it on her knees, hadn't she? But now—she turned, looking clumsily behind her, at where she'd slumped back against the exposed wall. She'd sat down at some point, had taken the sword in her hand. To steady her against the memories, to root her to the present. She hadn't thought about that time for a long, long while now, and even though it felt like another place, another life, the potency of the memory disoriented her. She could still feel the tension in the air, the fear and fury, the dread and desperation in the ringing of the blades, in the shouts of her name, and the light, the light flooding in—

"_K-Kaoru—!"_

Her father, standing in the doorway—

No. Kaoru realized only when she saw his figure silhouetted against the bright, dying light outside, his hair red like the sun flying behind him, that the shouting wasn't coming from her memories.

"_Kao—_"

His voice died somewhere in his chest and lodged there, between his clenched stomach and his choked throat, when he threw the doorway of the dojo open. His body lurched to a stop there, just the one hand braced on the side of the _shoji _holding his weight up from collapsing to the. To the.

Floor. She lay on the floor, against the exposed wall and the torn-down boards. Yahiko's folding screen leaning up beside her, her legs askew, in her. In her practice clothes. Her bokken at her side, wrapped in her loose fingers, in the darkness of the dojo.

His heart stopped.

Kenshin didn't feel it stop—it was too worn-out to feel that again, or maybe it had already stopped the moment he'd seen her sandals, her purse, her _ribbon_—but instead he knew that it did, knew it with the sort of bone-deep clarity, empty and perfect and certain, that came when death did. And the cruel world, which had no use for a man without a heart, threw him from its gravity, released him into the abyss, and he was lost to all sense and untethered to his body, to even the sorrow that ripped at his insides, even the despair that clawed at his soul, flung hopelessly, desperately into the endless blue.

Her eyes were blue. Blue, the deepest blue, the sort of night sky a man could drown in, that he used to drown in every drifting, rootless night on the road; under the turn of the open stars, the orb of the heavens that so easily dwarfed him and made him feel, for a brief, solacing moment, insignificant, just one inconsequential man in the infinite cosmos. He would lie against a tree, his goosefleshed arms tucked in against his chest to keep himself warm, and watch the sky pass him by without a word, and would feel a bit of cold comfort knowing that the world would continue without him, without a care for his past and his stained hands and his small, repentant soul in the night.

But she—her eyes—even that first night, even before he knew what they were doing to him, he'd known that her eyes had been the same colour as that sky, but different; acknowledging, and accepting, _absolving_. Under the sky he was a pathetic, wretched thing; but to her he was a man worth compassion, a man worth pardoning. A man. And that kept him warm, warmer than his hands had ever kept him, warmer than he'd felt in a decade.

He had never been able to understand how a person could have eyes deeper than the cruel, uncaring sky. Eyes so full of compassion and strength that he never deserved to meet, that he never wanted to see sparkling with tears (so he'd turned away that night, on the riverbank, but couldn't bear to look at the river or the sky above because he would just see her in them), that _cared_, that he never, ever, would ever look into again, that—

—blinked.

Sitting splayed against the wall, in the exact spot that he'd found her crumpled and cold and lifeless months before, Kaoru blinked.

And then scrambled up to her feet, and Kenshin felt his heart lurch back to life in his chest, the first beat so strong that it almost took him to his knees.

"I—uh—I didn't think you'd be home so fast, and—"

She was stammering, looking anywhere but at him, her fingers working anxiously around her bokken. In the faint light that spilt around from behind him he could see the flush of colour rising up her neck, over the strip of exposed skin between her collarbones and the loose binding around her chest. He could see her throat working, and when she swallowed the shadows shifting across the small hollow at the base of it, where strands of her dark hair fell and clung to a shining trail of sweat, where her heart—her _heart_, his sang, vibrating against his ribs_—_pulsed fast and strong and alive. More alive than anything. He saw her, and she'd never been more alive to him than in that moment, never been more real, which shook him harder than his heart did, to his very core. Even on the beach when she'd come stumbling out of the trees in her kimono and her smile and his name like hope on her lips, he'd had friends and companions, an adversary and a mission to keep him grounded. But here, alone in the dojo with her, with _her_, with just _her_, so alive and so real—

It took all of his control to stop himself from spanning the floor in four long steps and crushing her to his chest.

All of his control, and more, especially when she panicked, nervously clutching the bokken to her chest and rambling, "I—um—I just, I _know _you wanted to fix it up for me first, and you're doing such a good job, a-and Yahiko, and Sano too, and I just wanted to—" His sense was slowly coming back to him, only enough so that he could force himself to stand straight, to pry his hand from the door, to steady his knees and step into the darkness, leaving his shoes behind him. Only enough, only barely enough to keep him standing, to keep him sane, to keep them apart.

"Miss Kaoru."

Whatever she'd been rattling on about caught in her throat, and she jerked her eyes to his, but he was still wreathed in so much shadow, the light coming around him too bright for her to see him clearly. She looked down again and swallowed, rubbing the wooden hilt of her sword and the pads of her thumbs raw. "Y-yes?"

"Are you all right?"

He realized only belatedly, when he saw the flush climb up to her cheeks, that he'd meant to ask her about Megumi. His heart, pounding and beating and jumping in his chest, had beaten his mind to his tongue. It was fine, though, if she would look at him again like that; from just under her brow, just a flash of those lively and bright blue eyes as she twisted her lips in a frown and her fingers around her bokken. "… yes," she admitted to the floor after a moment in which she seemed to struggle with herself. "I'm all right…"

Her mind was too busy racing in a million different directions for Kaoru to notice the way his shoulders sagged, the way the taut tension drained from his muscles, the way he released his breath in a slow, quiet exhale. She was supposed to be _angry _at him, she reminded herself, she'd even practiced this in her head as she'd snuck home, but all the bluster and bristling waned into something else—not embarrassment or shame, something warmer than that—when she heard the dojo door click shut and looked up quickly. He turned away from the door, his hair a sweep of red in the darkness as it fell over his shoulder, and without the setting sun behind him she could suddenly see what she'd thought she'd seen a moment earlier, when she's squinted through the darkness at him.

She jerked her head back down to the ground before their eyes met completely, her ears burning with the same uneasy heat that was pooling in her. It's all in the eyes, the way he looks at you, Megumi'd said. His hair, red like fire, his eyes like twilight on the horizon, like candlelight.

Amber.

His eyes were shot with amber.

She stared wide-eyed down at the floor, her heart staggering, stumbling, swaying in her chest with the sudden and simple realization of it and what it meant.

"I hate it when Megumi's right," Kaoru whimpered, and only realized she'd said it out loud when his voice—soft, steady, but fixed, a bit deeper than usual, it must have been the dojo, that's why—responded to her.

"Where is Miss Megumi?"

Kaoru's mouth worked silently as the question sunk in. "Uh—ah—well, you know, she's been working so hard lately and the sake worked really fast, and, uh—I mean, it didn't _work_, I guess we just had a lot, but it, um…" She looked up so quickly that it made her dizzy, or maybe it was his sharp, keen eyes glowing at her like that, and she instantaneously knew that lying to him was a mistake. Her throat dried even more, her squirming hands stopping suddenly as her shoulders fell and her soul clenched, preparing for the worst. Her voice was small when the truth came out. "… she's asleep… at the Akabeko… But I made sure to only give her a _little_, not even a quarter of what I took at night! So she should wake up soon…"

"… you drugged Miss Megumi," Kenshin stated, and she flinched. "With what, Miss Kaoru?" She mumbled something incomprehensible, but he could read the small movements of her lips, and it sent a shock of hot shame down his spine, though he did not let it show. "The sleeping remedy she gave you?"

Kaoru hesitated and then pursed her mouth, which was enough of an answer. Kenshin let his breath out slowly through his nose, the constrained deflate of his lungs the only movement he would let show even as his mind spun wildly. Megumi had mentioned the medicine to him, about how it would help Kaoru sleep through the first few nights at home, and he'd been glad for the reprieve it would offer Kaoru, even if the implications of her needing it in the first place distressed him. If it was just a small dosage, Megumi would be fine, safe at the Akabeko; he would send Sanosuke to retrieve her the moment he arrived back, and would make sure himself that there was none of the stuff left in Kaoru's room when—

In the shadows the corners of Kaoru's lips tightened the smallest bit, and his mind drew to a stop just instants before she started talking.

"How did you know about that," she mumbled, wringing her hands around her bokken, and he remained silent. Her palms were sweating and she felt nearly sick with guilt now that she had said it aloud, that she'd _drugged _one of her closest friends, but underneath it ran a hot, humiliated current that swelled when Kenshin didn't answer her. She already knew the answer, anyway; that Megumi had told him, despite her promise to keep it a secret, but she wanted to see it in his eyes, and so looked up quickly to his eyes shining like the first strokes of violet and orange dusk outside.

"… one was… aware of your sleep troubles," he answered when his eyes caught hers, in a voice that was carefully and deliberately slow, then watched as the shadows fell over her face once more. Her hands squeezed around her sword, almost protectively, and he could sense the frustration in the lines of her arms and legs, the guilt in the sag of her shoulders, the alcohol in the flush on her chest, and…

Kenshin realized, suddenly, startlingly, only when she sucked in a deep, steadying breath and looked up at him again, her blue eyes bruised from the hurt but slowly shuttering shut on him, that he was been reading her.

And that now he wasn't.

"Is that why you've been keeping me from training?" Kaoru said, and her voice still soft, but stronger now, steady, with a snap that hadn't been there moments ago. Kenshin opened his mouth to reply, but his voice caught when she stepped abruptly to the side, revealing behind her the hole in the wall. "Or is it because of this?"

Kenshin snapped his mouth shut and didn't respond, but Kaoru heard his jaw pop as he ground his teeth together.

"So it _is _this," Kaoru breathed, and he swallowed—she could see in the dark the way his throat bobbed—but again said nothing. She sighed, sucked on her teeth in thought, and then turned to look at the hole as she considered how such a little thing—such a tiny, little piece of history—could tear down everything she'd built with her own two hands.

"Do you know what this is?" Kaoru asked suddenly, not because she was unsure that he did—he would know better than anyone—but because she wanted him to say it. She wanted to hear him say it.

"… do you, Miss Kaoru?" he replied cautiously, and they stood across from each other in the silent darkness, the hole like a chasm between them. Kenshin watched from the other side of the dojo as her eyes shimmered and sparkled with her own internal conflict, one that he wasn't privy to, and it hurt him to know that she was keeping it from him; but he didn't let it show. He didn't have the _right_ to let it show, considering the secrets he'd been keeping from her. He hadn't even realized how heavily they'd been weighing on his heart until she'd exposed them—the hole in the wall, the faded stains around it that she couldn't see in the dark and that Yahiko had tried so desperately to scrub out, his irrational fear (because he could admit now, seeing her shining so alive, that it was irrational) of her being in the dojo, in that desecrated space.

Kenshin breathed slowly, watching her eyes, watching her, and knew that they wouldn't be able to keep this terrible secret for very much longer, anyway. Or maybe that it was just that he was tired of keeping it. Or that seeing her standing there, so alive, so _real_, her heart thrumming under her flushed skin, made him realize that it just wasn't worth keeping from her anymore. Regardless of the reason, it was time to tell her the truth of Enishi's heavenly punishment.

And everything that would come with it.

His throat thickened, but he resolved himself. There was no better time than now. And if he could tell her, here, alone, just them—if he could explain without the others what had happened that day, and if he could put into words what it had felt like to see his whole world, the one that she had so carefully rebuilt for all of them out of the shattered shards of their lives, fall into nothingness when the light had been robbed from her eyes… If he could walk over to her and take her hands, and make her _understand_…

He'd done it once, a long time ago; he'd been younger then, much younger and more naïve, but more honest, too, and Tomoe had accepted him. And Kaoru… she'd accepted him a long time ago, before she'd even known just how sullied his soul was. She would… she'd probably… that is, if he was _right_ about how she felt about… but she'd been so hard to read lately, and…

His mouth was dry, his heart throbbing in his temples. Kenshin swallowed around this thick tongue and closed his eyes for a quick, stilling moment, centering himself and what he was about to do.

"There's something," he began carefully, quietly, controlling the tremble in his voice as he opened his eyes to look at her. "That we." He paused, drew his shoulders together and tried again. "Miss Kaoru, there's… something that _I_ should have told you—"

"Me first," she interrupted, and Kenshin stammered to a stop when he realized that, in that one blink of his eyes, she had raised her bokken and leveled it at his head. She didn't even seem to notice his pronoun slip, though it rang hot in his own ears. "Do you remember when we met?"

"… I-one… is not sure what…" He began, stumbling over his tongue, then stopped when she fixed him in place with her stare, a snap in her eyes that he'd only seen directed at him one time before, on that first, cold evening in Tokyo, when the brazen shout of his name had turned his shoulders, had ended his wandering, had brought him home. Kaoru watched his adam's apple bob and his hands tense at his sides, watched the softness in his wide, perceptive eyes—amber, they were still glowing with amber—as she slowly started closing the distance between them.

"You know," she said, and moved her left foot slowly across her right as she circled towards him. "That night, in the streets." He gaped at her like a fish, mouth working silently. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

"… one… does, yes," he replied softly, the question in his voice belying how her eyes—how _those _eyes—were making his pulse suddenly quicken, making the small ember that he always kept smothered at the seat of him blaze despite himself to life. But it was tempered by the memory of her in the darkness, of those words being shouted from her lips, of her blood being spattered against the wall by that masquerading thud that had the audacity to take up his title. "You called me Battousai the mansla—"

"Not that part," Kaoru cut in, her approach flagging for a second. "I was wrong about that part."

Despite the high thrum of his blood through his veins he smiled, small and wry and a little bit sad. "That's… not _exactly_ the truth, Miss Kaoru…"

"Well, okay, fine," she retorted, and her bokken wobbled as she shrugged her shoulders. "I _was _right. But that's just a name. You're more than that. You're Himura Kenshin." This seemed to strengthen Kaoru's resolve even as it made him suck in a small, hot breath of surprise, and she must have noticed because she tilted her chin to look at him down the line of her blade. Her fingers released and then clenched around the hilt as she leveled it once more at him. "Just Kenshin. A good man."

She had no idea what she did to him, he thought. _He _didn't know any better than she did, because when she stepped forward again with one measured footstep he found himself moving back with her, slowly, at the same pace, letting her control their course. She changed their path, stepping carefully to the left, and he did the same, until they had begun circling each other, never once breaking eye contact.

When he almost tripped on Sanosuke's hammer her eyes flashed, and Kenshin wondered for a quick second if she could hear the pounding of his heart over the quiet sounds of their feet.

"Miss Kaoru," he asked carefully, "what are you—"

"Do you," Kaoru interrupted as she stepped easily over a pile of wrist guards, "remember what I said? Or don't you?"

She was… she was _challenging_ him, Kenshin realized, and not without a thrill. He tamped it down, though, and swallowed before speaking.

"'… Battousai the manslayer,'" he said, and the spark that lit her eyes was the same one that he had seen in her that first time, brave, bold, and defiant. "'At long last I've found you.'" She smiled this time, though; he could see it when she slipped into a patch of pale moonlight that shone in through a hole in the _shoji_. "For two months you have murdered at will.'" They'd switched sides entirely by the time she stopped, her right foot forward, her left heel just off the ground. "'It ends tonight,'" he finished, stilling across from her, his attention trained not on the tip of her bokken but on her bright eyes.

"You _do _remember," Kaoru said, not without surprise but definitely pleased, and Kenshin inclined his head just a bit so she wouldn't see the heat rise across his face. "But you said something to me that night, too, that I've been thinking about for a long time." He stopped, his head still lowered, and looked up across his brow at her. Her arms were tensing, and he could see the powerful muscles of her legs shifting underneath her hakama as she slid into the basic _chudan-gamae_ stance, the one that he'd seen a million times, of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu. He knew this; even if he couldn't read her, he could read this.

"… did I," Kenshin said slowly as he raised his head, and she smirked.

"'A swordsman must know his opponent's strength as well as his own,'" Kaoru repeated, and in the moment before she lunged Kenshin caught the strange twist of her feet, the sudden crouch that sent her winding low to the ground, her chest and her bokken with it swinging to the side. And when she sprang at him a breath later her battle-shout cracked the air and her sword—her _sword_, she was holding it in just her left hand, aiming for his right shoulder, and he rolled himself out to the left from under the quick swing of the attack just in time to flash his eyes to her open side and see her leg spinning out, her right hand pistoning up in through the gap. But not a fist like he expected; her fingers were crooked, her knuckles pressed into a blade, like the one that he suddenly realized had turned and was about to crack into his left shoulder, forcing him into her strike—

"_Kaoru!_"

Her fingers jerked to a stop, her hand hovering just breaths from his ribs. His were crossed in front of him, his left palming the bokken at his right side, his right straining to catch her strike at his left. Their hard breaths shook the silence, his chest heaving just as much as hers, their blood roaring together, their faces showing the same plain shock, as Kenshin grasped what had just happened.

"_Kenshin! Somebody!_"

Megumi's voice resonated through the night, and Kaoru, crouched in front of him, opened her mouth to say something; and then blinked once, slowly, her throat working noiselessly as she too understood what she'd done.

Kaoru stood suddenly. She dropped her bokken from his side and went to reel her right arm back in, but wasn't quite fast enough this time. Kenshin reached out and caught her wrist, his fingers encircling her hot, flushed skin, his thumb lighting on her racing pulse.

Kaoru stopped, but almost flinched when he opened his mouth, and wouldn't meet his eyes.

"_Is anyone here!?_" Megumi shouted again, and Kaoru waited until he let her go. When he finally did, slowly and uncertainly, she turned and walked away, leaving him to stand in the shadow and listen to the muffled beat of her footfalls on the grimy wood, and then the rustle of her straw sandals.

He followed her moments later, a safe distance behind.

Twilight hung heavy in the sky and Megumi braced herself just inside the gate, the Akabeko lantern she carried casting her profile cast in stark shadows against the dark blue sky. "Kenshin! Sano! _Anyone_, I don't know where—_Sanosuke!_"

"What's goin' on—hey! Watch it!" In the small space of the front gate he barely dodged braining Megumi with the wood on his shoulder. She threw herself at him, her fists bunching in his jacket, and sent Yahiko's small pile of wood across the front entrance as he scrambled to pick up the discarded lantern. When he held it up Sanosuke's cheeks were colouring, and the boy below him gawped up at him and the woman gasping hot against his skin in dawning disgust. "Damn, foxy," Sano joked awkwardly, "not in front of the—"

"_Kaoru's missing,_" she shouted into his chest, and then the wood on his shoulder clattered to the ground, Yahiko's face going as pale as the moon.

"What? What do you mean, missing? Wasn't she at the Akabeko with you?!"

"S-she was, but we were drinking, and I-I," Megumi stammered, her hands flying around her face as Sanosuke grabbed her shoulders. "I got tired, though and—and when I woke up—" Her voice, normally so high and mighty and composed, cracked as she crumpled in against him again. "I was _drugged_, Sano, and she was _gone_—"

His hands tightened around her arms protectively the instant before Megumi heard, through her own ringing ears and the beginnings of the sobs that shook her chest, the slow knock at the gate. Three times. Knock, knock, knocking.

"It seems… that we are interrupting something, doesn't it," a stranger's voice said from the dark road outside the gate, and sucking in a hard breath Megumi spun, but Sanosuke kept one hand on her arm and it disoriented her enough that she looked quickly to the ground to gain her balance back. She realized, then, that Yahiko had stepped in front of her as well.

"Who are you," the boy snapped as he whipped his bamboo sword off of his back and leveled it in one hand at the tall stranger's dark face. Though it was hidden under the curve of his hat, the lantern light that Yahiko shone up with his other hand cast pale shadows across his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly, "but shouldn't you begin by introducing yourself, child?"

Yahiko stiffened like a cat about to pounce, and Megumi could feel the muscles of Sanosuke's lanky arms tense and coil. "What the hell did you do to missy, you son of a bitch," he growled as her scanned the stranger, her eyesight sharpened by the panic, for any evidence, any clues. His clothes were rich, the folds in his black trousers stiff under his _kyahan _leg coverings, his western waistcoat dyed a deep indigo, and he was well groomed. Not just any street thug, then, and something clicked in her head. She'd seen him before.

"I'm not entirely sure of whom you speak," he began, his speech clear and proper in contrast to Sano's slangy snarl, and when he went to remove his hat Yahiko gave a shout and struck out at him. The man withdrew a bit further into the shadows from which he'd emerged, and looked back over his shoulder. "Actually," he mumbled, the planes of shadow on his face shifting as he turned and looked back down the street, "I'm not even sure that this is the right pla—"

"_He means Kaoru," _Yahiko yelled at the same time that Megumi tore herself away from Sanosuke and snatched the lantern back. He'd been looking at a small speck of light hovering in the night down the street, and when she jerked the lantern towards it she caught the flash of a horseshoe, the flick of a long, grey tail, a small candle flame flickering behind the carriage door.

"_Meg!_" Sano shouted, but she stood strong, swinging the lantern back around to the stranger's face. In the sudden flare of light across his skin she saw his jaw tense, the dark hair cropped close to his neck, the sharp line of his chin.

"… it seems that we are in the right place, then," he said, and she knew that she'd seen him somewhere, from the corner of her eye, as she's scanned the crowd—

"He was there! He was there after Kaoru vanished!" Megumi shouted, recognizing him in a sudden flash. "I saw you in the market, outside the Akabeko! You were in the carriage with the grey mares!"

The man opened his mouth to respond, but Sano lunged in between them, his fists bunching the stiff starched collar around his neck. "You were _following _them!?"

"_What did you do with Kaoru?!_" Yahiko barked, and with the tip of his sword knocked the man's hat off of his head as Sanosuke lifted him up off the ground. As he did Megumi jerked the lantern closer to his face and the stranger pulled back from the light, squinting hard and lifting a hand to shield his shining blue eyes.

"I certainly did not do _anything _to Kamiya Kao—" he began, panic hitching his voice, but Sanosuke didn't give him time to finish, a shout of rage ripping from his throat as he reeled back with one fist.

A first that Kaoru, standing behind him, cracked it with her bokken. "What in the_ world _are you doing, Sanosuke?" She demanded, and he promptly dropped the stranger to the roadside as Yahiko gave a hoarse shout of her name and practically flew into her side. She let out a _whoosh _around whatever she was about to shout nextwhen he cracked his head into her ribs and grabbed her around her waist, but she only had time to light her hand on the boy's shoulder before he sprung away again.

Sanosuke stared at her, holding his wrist, and barked, "what—you're _okay_, missy!?"

"Of course I'm okay! Are _you?! _Aren't the police already after you?! You can't just go beating up on _civilians_, Sanosuke!"

"Wha—but—foxy said that you vanished!"

"I—well, yeah, but it's not exactly like that, because…"

The lantern bounced furiously, casting strange shadows across the front yard and up and down the street, as Megumi jerked a small package out from her sleeves. "But someone _drugged _me, Kaoru! With the same sleeping powder that I…"

Her panicked voiced trailed off as the light swung across Kaoru's guilt-stricken face.

"I swear, Megumi, I can explain—"

"You—_you!_"Megumi raised her hand suddenly, and Kaoru shrank with her bokken in front of her face. The doctor froze, and then breathed in once, long and loud, through her nostrils. She clamped her red-painted lips shut and held her hand at the side of her head, letting her long, manicured nails cut into her palm as she crushed the small triangle instead of throwing it in Kaoru's face.

At the last second she turned the aborted gesture to a careful and practiced sweep of her long, thick hair over her shoulder. The cut of her sharp glare stabbing into Kaoru's face was worse than anything Megumi could have thrown at her. "Yes. You'll _explain_, if it's possible, exactly how it was that _your…_"

Her voice died off as she caught, through the dark shadows of the swaying lantern light, the flash of amber over Kaoru's shoulder, just beyond the gate. But when she raised the lantern to cast more of its glow on him, his hand was gentle on Kaoru's shoulder, his smile careful as always, his eyes the same strange violet they usually were.

"This lowly one is glad that you are safe, Miss Megumi," Kenshin said quietly, and Kaoru flushed darkly and moved aside to let him pass. When he reached out and gently took the lantern from the doctor's hands, though, she could feel his pulse beating hard through his skin. "Thank you, Sano, Yahiko, for carrying the last of the wood." He walked forward before she could say anything, and Megumi turned to follow him, her hand moving to her mouth. He stepped over the edge of the gate, out into the street. "It would be best, though, if it were inside the yard, that it would. As for you…"

Kenshin stopped on the far side of the street, holding the lantern above him with his right hand, his left arranged on the hilt of his sword. As he lifted it the light swayed towards the wall, then across a pair of western shoes, up across his dark pants and to his shirtsleeves as he pushed himself back to his feet.

"… is there something," Kenshin began, the lantern casting long shadows up his smiling face as he stared down at the stranger, "this lowly one can do to…"

Kaoru gasped as the light skimmed across his face, and Kenshin's thumb pressed against the guard of his sword.

The man stood, slowly, muttering something under his breath, and then turned to call out down the road. "Well, come on out, then! We're at the right place, apparently." Everyone but Kenshin and Kaoru, whose attention was fixed on the man standing in the dark road, watched in the distance as the small, flickering candleflame stretched down to the ground as the carriage door opened, then vanished as someone stepped in front of it.

Hearing the approaching footsteps, the stranger turned and dusted his pants off, then rearranged his collar. "I'd heard that the Kamiya Kasshin dojo had been in some sort of trouble," he said while he did so, and his voice was polite through the dark. Kenshin raised the lantern higher in one hand, casting its glow across the line of his jaw, the bridge of his nose, even as his knuckles cracked around the hilt of his sword. "I'm sure I wasn't expecting anything quite like _this_ though, my dearest Kaoru…"

In the dark there was the slightest _click_, like a door opening or closing, as he thumbed his sword out of its sheath; but it was lost in the sudden rush of air, in the shuddering of the lantern light across the stranger's blue eyes, as Kaoru flung herself past Kenshin, her hair brushing across his cheek and smelling like sweat and sake and jasmine, and into his arms.

"_Cousin!_"

He laughed, the sound ringing down the dark streets, and then turned his head a bit as from the shadows stepped his foreign companion, her face unmoving, her golden hair catching the small light of the lantern.

"Careful, dearest cousin," he whispered, loud enough for them all to hear in the dark fall of night. "My betrothed is watching." And as Kamiya Kyoujirou returned Kaoru's embrace, Kenshin could see the shadows deepening at the corners of his smiling mouth.


End file.
